


I Turn Out The Light (We Kiss Goodnight)

by LittleRedCosette



Series: Armistice [3]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Falling In Love, Forgiveness, Homophobic Language, M/M, Nightmares, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, References to Illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-17 17:21:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15466302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRedCosette/pseuds/LittleRedCosette
Summary: “Contrary to popular belief, dear, not every Brit thinks a cup of tea solves everything,” Eames snarls back, glowering at the window like he’s considering jumping out of it.Arthur sighs quietly to himself, folds his hands peaceably in his lap and says,“Do you want me to make you some tea?”They are awake. They are alive. There’s more to it than that, though.





	1. Arthur

**Author's Note:**

> Lovely people,
> 
> This is just a little post-This Man & post-Trust All fic. It doesn't really ask or answer any questions.
> 
> I swear to you all I tried to write it fluffy. Happy fics are freaking hard! I have no idea how people do it. If anyone wants to teach me how to write exclusively fluffy stuff, I'd welcome some tutoring, because apparently my soul is made of dust and dirt.
> 
> I hope you like it. It's kind of just a bridge between the **then** of my last two fics, and the **now** of my next one. Hope everyone's having a good summer? Or at least, are getting some serious sunshine.
> 
> Title, as ever, comes from Patrick Wolf's song Armistice.
> 
> Yours always,  
> LRCx

.

.

 ****“Eames, for the love of God, I will drop you like third period French if you don’t cut it out.”

The laugh that stutters out of Eames hurts to hear, a little rasping, rattling noise that falls between them as Arthur takes another ten pounds of loose muscle over his shoulders.

“Bad analogy,” Eames wheezes, shuffling forward another step and a half with all the confidence of a newborn calf. “You’re fluent.”

Arthur sighs, distracted as he grits his teeth.

Eames’ arm, slung over the back of his neck, tightens at the elbow, as if ready to catch a bad fall.

“I’m not going to drop you,” he says grumpily.

“I _am_ heavier than you, though.”

“Trust me, I’ve noticed,” Arthur grunts as they finally hone in on the bathroom.

Eames huffs, frustrated, his hands gripping the front of Arthur’s shirt.

It’s not that Eames had been comatose for long enough to suffer any _real_ muscle degradation. Hell, a bad case of the flu would probably have lasted longer.

Nevertheless, coupled with the viral rage of the spoiled somnacin that had torn holes in his guts and thinned his arteries like corrosive acid, it had been more than enough to set him back to a stage of helplessness Arthur’s never seen outside of sick toddlers.

And sweet _fuck_ has Eames been belligerent about it all.

 _“I_ can do it,” he says for the umpteenth time as they cross over the doorway into the bathroom, as if he’s already forgotten nearly braining himself on the toilet bowl last time he made the mistake of thinking he was capable of complex actions, like aiming his dick _and_ pissing _and_ standing, all at the same time.

“Uh-huh,” Arthur agrees with pointed disbelief, one hand remaining firm on his upper back for support.

“Arthur, I’m thirty-three years old. I can bloody well shake and tuck without your lordly supervision.”

Arthur considers pointing out Eames’ skin looks even more translucent in this harsher white ceiling light. Or that he’s swaying on his feet. Or that he apparently doesn’t even know how old he actually is.

It seems like an exercise in futility, so he doesn’t waste his breath.

Instead he stands closer, so that their lines are arched together, cotton skin close, and he can see the faint stubble already growing back from where he took a razor to the almost-beard on Eames’ jaw this morning.

“You’re the one who insisted on leaving the hospital,” he points out with a resolved authority he picked up from babysitting the Cobb children. “You know, where they had nice sterile equipment, like saline drips and catheters.”

Eames’ expression makes it perfectly clear he has a very different word to describe Vienna General’s medical equipment than _nice,_ but sensibly keeps this word to himself.

There’s sweat on his brow and his upper lip, which is looking chapped and sore. Arthur makes a mental note to give another go at convincing Eames that pineapple juice _isn’t_ in fact snake venom in disguise.

The bathroom, like every other room in the apartment, is uncomfortably warm.

After the first night of violent shivering that brought them nothing but embarrassment and frustration and a laundry load of covers at two in the morning, however, Arthur hasn’t dared let the central heating get below twenty-five degrees celsius.

It’s only been three days since they woke up from the malignant depths of Limbo.

He still looks at Arthur with distrust, sometimes.

No, more like disbelief. As if he still isn’t entirely sure how Arthur _got_ here.

Right now, however, he’s looking at Arthur with a firm-jawed, anxious challenge. He’s let go of his death grip on Arthur and is leaning heavily on one hand into the tiled wall of the ensuite bathroom.

“What?” Arthur asks and Eames, he raises his sweaty eyebrows, like he has any grounds whatsoever to maintain his dignity _now._ “I’m not turning around.”

_“Arthur.”_

“Eames,” Arthur snorts. “If I can stick my tongue in your ass, I’m pretty sure I can handle watching you piss.”

“They are _completely_ mutually exclusive scenarios,” Eames scoffs, looking downright furious. “I can’t believe you’d - oh my God, are you fucking getting off on this? Of _course_ you are. You absolute-”

Arthur nudges his hip against Eames, who, distracted, almost topples sideways. Arthur grabs his arm in time to keep him upright, raising his eyebrows in an only slightly mocking _see?_

To his credit, Eames stops trying to squirm away, only to continue grumbling,

“And it’s not like you’ve done _that_ in months, anyhow.”

He’s faffing awkwardly at his elasticated sweatpants with his free hand, and his breaths are loud, wonderfully horribly loud in Arthur’s ears.

Arthur lets himself grin, now that Eames has looked away and won’t mistake it for being laughed at, like the moron he is.

For the most part, there’s not really much evidence of Eames’ suffering beyond his ashy pallor and general aura of absolute misery.

There are moments like this, when his neck is curved swan arch downwards and there’s sweat beading on his nose and he’s swearing under his breath, when Arthur can almost pretend like this is any day that came before this one.

Before, when they loved each other with terrible, hurtful misunderstanding.

Eames is trembling and his breath is laboured and despite his protests, he’s probably expending enough energy to require a nap after this ordeal, much to his own quite loud consternation, no doubt.

Arthur reaches out to return a steady, unobtrusive hand to his sweat-slick back.

Eames flinches minutely, doesn’t tell him to stop.

Arthur chalks this one up as a win and waits for Eames to _shake and tuck_ all by himself.

Getting back to bed is, if possible, even more traumatic than leaving it. Bolstered by his successful peeing, Eames is even less receptive to Arthur’s help than before.

It’s painful, watching him shuffle into the nested covers over the Queen size bed with a nauseated expression, if only for the exasperation that spikes in Arthur’s chest to see it.

He waits until Eames has stopped wriggling over the absurdly fluffy pillows before taking a seat on the edge of the mattress.

They’ve been sharing, more out of necessity than anything else.

Eames isn’t in any condition to get up in the night if he needs something, and Arthur, well. Arthur doesn’t plan on sleeping anywhere that isn’t less than two feet away from Eames for the next century.

Somehow, the Englishman looks both pastier and more flushed now than he did half an hour ago. He’s tucked his hands under the duvet and is looking at Arthur with an owlish, angry obstinance.

“Do you want me to make you some tea?” Arthur asks cautiously, fully prepared for Eames’ derisive snort.

“Contrary to popular belief, _dear,_ not every Brit thinks a cup of tea solves everything,” he snarls back, glowering at the window like he’s considering jumping out of it.

Arthur sighs quietly to himself, folds his hands peaceably in his lap and says,

“Do you want me to make you some tea?”

“Yes of _course_ I bloody do,” Eames snaps bitterly, turning back just in time to catch Arthur’s irrepressible grin.

Mouth twisting around his own lemon sharp disgruntlement, Eames asks,

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” Arthur replies. Then, “It’s just good to have you back.”

Eames grunts, in what seems to be an indication he disagrees. It doesn’t last.

His face softens, and while his frown doesn’t entirely go away, it does have the welcome effect of lifting some of the sickness that hangs dust-cloud over him, shrouding him in a bleak air of self-pity that is unpleasant and unfamiliar.

Eames closes his eyes, settling back into his monstrous pillows.

Arthur had promised to let him try showering by himself, too. Thankfully, it seems getting to the toilet and back has been enough to curb Eames' wanderlust for the day, though.

Just as Arthur gets up, Eames says in a tart voice,

“No sugar.”

Arthur rolls his eyes.

“I remember.”

“Of course you do,” Eames mutters.

His lips are curled tightly upwards, though, bird bath delighted and unable to pretend otherwise.

Arthur stops to kiss his forehead, tastes sour sweat and, ok, maybe they really should give the shower another go after all.

“Be right back,” he says, and Eames hums gratefully in the back of his throat.

“I know,” he says, and it rings in the stuffy air like truth.

.

.

In a warehouse in Belfast, Arthur’s heart caved in, imploding galaxy of stars.

“This is Eames, my Forger,” she said, and that face, that very same face.

He stared back at Arthur, golden black hole of bitter fury.

“Arthur, is it?” he asked coldly, in a voice of diamond scorn.

.

.

A hand on the back of his neck, tight as death over his spine.

.

.

Arthur bursts awake, hands at his throat, in his throat. Choking on airless words that spasm in his gut.

It’s dark, it’s hot. Desert sand hot.

He’s sweating and gulping and he flinches away when a pair of hands brush over his chest.

“It’s ok, it’s alright,” a scree rough voice says.

Arthur, shaking, folds into that voice, and when the hands come back he flinches towards them this time. Arches into that clammy care, those vowel weighted words.

“I - I - I -” he tries, and tries and fails.

Eames shushes him, hands and mouth. The heat of him across the bed.

Arthur hitches and gags into the hollow of his chest, pushes his forehead against that hard sternum as arms enclose him. Protective, this shell of vulnerable flesh and ink.

“Ssh, that’s it, it’s ok,” Eames lies, because that’s what he does.

Arthur’s not sure which one of them kicked off the covers, but they’re hanging off the end of the bed, now.

“Sorry,” he manages to force out, as a bead of sweat slides horribly down his back and Eames strokes a finger over his shoulders

“Don’t be,” Eames says, a little too quickly.

Arthur cringes, pulling away, just enough to make Eames retract his arms.

The heating’s still on. Arthur gips a little in the cloying air, holds tight to the stretch of his sweatpants, knees tucked near his chest.

“Do you need anything?” Eames asks.

He’s balled his fists in his own lap, hiding the tremor that won’t quite go away.

His face is softer in the dark, pillow crumpled and lovely.

Arthur stares down between them, the uncharted bedspace between _here_ and _there._

“It’s stupid,” he says hoarsely, even as his mouth wobbles around something else.

Eames lets out a small, despairing sound. Impatience and crackling.

Arthur cringes again, away, ashamed. Shifts under the hand that cups the back of his head, the flutter and pull of Eames, of his very nature.

“Arthur,” he says, the sort of quiet desperation that Arthur feels in his throat every time he wakes up. “You don’t have to pretend to be alright, you know. You’re a shit liar anyway.”

Arthur thinks, maybe, he’s supposed to laugh.

It comes out angry, impotent.

 _“You_ spent four days in Limbo!” he snaps, which, _fuck,_ is the last thing he should be saying.

It’s just so mortifying, the sweat flash terror. Every night without fail and Eames, he can barely stand up without falling down but his legs, they’ll get stronger, while his mind, it seems so _fine_ in comparison to Arthur’s.

It’s not like Arthur _wants_ Eames to be plagued with nightmares, but seriously, not even _one?_

Arthur pushes his face into his knees, away from Eames’ calloused fingers, away from his tender voice as he says,

“It’s not a competition, you know.”

Even at a whisper, it pierces Arthur too deep.

“Arthur,” Eames says, tightening a hand over his damp scalp. The darkness that blankets them, masks and quilts of kindness. “You spent an entire day getting repeatedly killed by my psychotic subconscious. There are people serving life sentences for less than what my mind did to you.”

Arthur reaches up, takes Eames hand in both of his own and brings it close to his face. Brings it to his nose and his mouth, then cups it under his chin.

“Don’t do that,” he whispers back. Shakes his head slow, slow like watered down promises. “Don’t take this and make it your fault.”

There’s a whole host of things that Eames needs to answer for, as far as Arthur is concerned, but this isn’t one of them.

“Arthur,” Eames says, and if it comes out choked and upset, well, it’s not the first time. “It _is_ my-”

“No, it’s not!” Arthur snaps, doesn’t mean to shove Eames’ hands away, scalding, doesn’t mean for that flash of hurt to dance over Eames like a splash of boiling water. “Eames, for God’s sake, the only reason your _psychotic subconscious_ did that was because-”

“Arthur, stop,” Eames interrupts, louder, thicker.

He swallows more commands like barbed wire in his teeth and he looks away, then. Looks away and his profile, silhouetted against an indigo charm, is perfectly still. Predator in the desert storm.

Arthur watches him, the round lines of him. Reaches up with that forceful hand and brushes the backs of his knuckles against his scruffy cheek. Eames closes his eyes, closes them up like the boarding of a house, shop-shut and unreachable.

“We have to talk about it at some point,” Arthur says, quietly, ever so needfully. A secret they stole without meaning to. “Not talking is what got us here.”

It’s possible that Eames leans, every so slightly, into Arthur’s hand.

The porcelain shell around Arthur’s worries breaks, splinters and shards. A sound trips up out of him without even meaning to and he says it, begs it, pleads for it before he can stop it.

He opens his selfish mouth and cries,

“I need you to forgive me.”

And Eames, his eyes open so wide and he says that name so perfectly, says,

_“Arthur.”_

Says it sad like an apology, like an _I can’t_ that Arthur’s known all along and he reaches, reaches across no man’s land and plunges his hands so deep into Eames’ skin, his fingers brush against his soul, if there’s even one to be found.

“I know, ok?” he cries, skin burning against skin, that coarse fierce rub of bodies crushing together in the dark like a sandstorm. “I know I have no right to ask that of you. But I can’t - I can’t forgive _myself.”_

Eames’ fingers, tugging hard on his hair and it used to feel good and now it just feels _wrong,_ Arthur is _wrong,_ Arthur is far away and Arthur is right here and Arthur, he thinks for the first time in years he might really be lost, now.

“I told Olivier,” he says, even though he promised himself he wasn’t going to drop this shit on Eames, not until he was _better,_ not until he could at least take a fucking shower by himself. Not until he could get up and walk out of the front door and never come back if he so desired.

Eames, his mouth closed damp on his temple and their legs tangled up like brambles.

“She hates me,” Arthur says which is probably not a lie. “And I know, I know I deserve it but, but Eames - I didn’t - wasn’t - I just need - I want -”

He might have said more but Eames, his mouth closed damp on his mouth, a brutal mockery of what should be a kiss, another on his cheek and on his head and those hands near his throat, near enough to squeeze, near enough to snap.

Arthur can’t fill his lungs so they just clamp up and he thinks that shriek-sharp fox bark might be his own voice bouncing back against these peach creme walls. The night spills through the window and there’s no crack for the light.

Eames, hands and hips and knees and eyes. Arthur feels weight beneath him and over him, feels the exhaustion in Eames’ limbs as he rolls over on the bed, pulls Arthur with him even though he’s writhing away and he still isn’t really breathing.

Lies on the bed and clamps him down with both sleep dead arms and waits it out, breathes it out, in measured stubbornness and a weak grip.

Arthur feels the miles of their skin rolled together. Skin that he knows, and Eames knows.

His mouth is near a collarbone and his hands are bruise deep in Eames’ ribs and he doesn’t know which of them is trembling but really, it’s probably both of them.

He blinks and tastes tears and listens to the rabbit thump of Eames’ heart under his ear, thready and strong.

Arthur lets out a wet, weak sound of disapproval.

“I’m supposed to be taking care of you, not the other way around.”

With his ear pressed to Eames chest like that, his laugh sounds more like a purr.

Arthur knows that, has heard it plenty of times before.

He’d forgotten.

Eames laughs, a bounce of sunlight on a glass pane and he says,

“Well _they’re_ not mutually exclusive scenarios,” that creme brulee grin pressed into Arthur’s forehead. “You are rubbish at this, aren’t you?”

Arthur, wet cheeks and wet mouth and his leg hooked around Eames’ thigh like there’s any chance he might not be there in the morning.

Then, only the faintest of snickers, that breeze on the dark window as the air cools around them, settles like dust.

“How about some tea?”

He peers up at Eames through his clumped lashes, at those silvery eyes looking down at him with gentle humour and not one bite of upset.

“You’ll have to make it though,” Eames continues, hands threading through Arthur’s hair and legs bending at the knees to shake him off. “I’m not entirely sure I won’t drop the kettle on myself.”

That tremor in his fingers, fluttering over Arthur’s scalp like kisses.

“Yeah,” Arthur says, all limbs and reluctance. “Yeah, ok.”

He slides on shaky feet out of the bed, and Eames lets him go through loose curling fingers. Stares up at him from the pillows and quirks a tiny, tiny grin.

“No sugar,” he says.

“I remember,” Arthur replies.

And as he turns to shuffle to the kitchen, tired and trembling and a thousand times better, he hears,

“Of course you do.”

.

.

There is an empty grave bearing Arthur’s real name.

He thinks his family were told there was nothing left of him to bury, and it made him so angry when he found out. When he found that obsidian block of misplaced bereavement, the golden curl of his bookended dates.

They _buried_ him in the Phelps family plot, next to his mother’s parents.

He supposes there are worse eternal rests than one in the Garden State.

.

.

His first love, Lydia Ralph.

She was kind to him even though he had more anger than love to give.

He called her a bitch, once, and she told him, quietly,

“If you want to hurt me, Benjamin, then slap me. Otherwise, do your homework and shut up.”

He had blushed and sniffled and done his homework and shut up. Then they’d walked home from the library together, stopped for milkshakes and fries on the way and for a few wonderful hours they had been the only two people in the whole world.

.

.

Arthur wishes he could still love like that.

Wholly and exclusively, enshrined by the abandon and gratitude of affection.

.

.

It’s probably only teenagers that love like that, though.

.

.

He wakes up in the morning, groggy. Mouth dry and tasting of tea.

His face is pressed into a small gap between Eames’ shoulder and the mattress. He can feel the sow, cautious breath of feigning sleep and he grins, shuffling. Knows Eames will feel it.

Sure enough, a quiet pained laugh.

“Thank fuck for that,” Eames murmurs. “Move, now, darling. Before my indecisive stomach chooses the reverse function.”

Arthur pushes up through the skin thick air, onto his forearms.

His legs, he realises, are hooked decidedly around Eames’ right knee, effectively pinning him.

He withdraws, concerned. Watches as Eames rolls to the side in a long, slow movement.

There’s absolutely nothing graceful about it. Nonetheless, it’s already a significant improvement on yesterday’s poor effort.

Once he’s upright, Eames sits on the side of the bed, hands gripping the edge of the mattress and breathing at his legs.

“You OK?” Arthur asks with a healthy measure of fake nonchalance that makes Eames snort.

“Mmm,” he says, head bowing closer to his chest, stretching the knobs of his spine through the skin of his neck.

Arthur puts his hand between Eames’ shoulder blades, avoiding the marks higher up, hidden by his T-shirt. Eames shivers anyway, although that might be the nausea.

“You should have woken me up,” Arthur scolds, even though he feels so much fresher already, feels a thousand worlds away from the sweaty, gasping mess of the night.

“You needed the sleep,” Eames says, solidifying the guilty twinge in Arthur’s chest, so he lets out a chiding, impatient sound.

“Eames-”

_“Arthur.”_

Arthur rolls his eyes. The battle is already lost.

“Do you need a hand?” he asks instead, as if it might sound any more acceptable than asking if he needs _help._

There’s a pause, and Arthur pointedly doesn’t outright congratulate Eames on not immediately refusing on principle, although the urge to do so is strong.

“No, ta,” Eames says after a moment, and slowly he stands up.

He’s steadier today, and he looks over his shoulder to grin toothily at Arthur, that smarmy look of confidence that makes him scoff.

“Yes well done, you stood up,” Arthur says and it’s supposed to be teasing, supposed to be _playful,_ but even Arthur winces at the wasp sting in his voice.

Eames’ grin contorts instantly into a defensive scowl and he turns back, starts walking in half steps to the bathroom.

“Eames-”

“Fuck off, Arthur,” Eames snaps, hackles sky high and patience at an all time low.

“Don’t be stubborn,” Arthur says, goose down soft, that feathery apology he can’t quite muster.

“Don’t be a shithead,” Eames retorts in a tired, closed jaw voice.

He snaps the bathroom door shut behind him and Arthur doesn’t comment on how hard he leans into the handle as he does it.

Arthur gets up silently, follows to the closed door and stays very still as he listens for any particularly loud _thumps._

He still feels jittery. It gnaws wretchedly on his nerves and he wants it to be worry for Eames but he knows it isn’t, not really.

Eames is _fine._

Shaky and sallow skinned and bone-break exhausted, but he’ll get better. He’s already getting better.

It’s Arthur who seems to be getting worse. As if some direct correlation might be drawn between their stability, a balance that should render them equal but instead just keeps tipping seesaw from one extreme to the other.

Arthur wonders, standing on the other side of that closed bathroom door, whether there will come a time when they finally realise, between them, that some wounds are fatal in the long run.

He wonders if this is some kind of long term, secondary drowning. If they survived everything else but they didn’t survive it properly and it’s actually peacetime that will kill them in the end.

Lost to his tongue bitten worries, he doesn’t hear the splashing tap or the footsteps.

The door opens abruptly and he leaps back several feet wearing his most _un-eavesdropping_ expression.

Eames is leaning into the door handle again, lighter this time. His mouth twitches in what might justifiably be called a quarter smile.

His brow remains furrowed as he stares at Arthur’s throat and says with all the enthusiasm of an un-anaesthetised tooth pulling,

“You should probably help me shower.”

Arthur’s had sexier proposals in his life, it has to be said. Nevertheless, he smiles widely in response and this time it’s definitely _teasing,_ definitely _playful,_ when he replies,

“Oh, really?”

That mouth twitch again, and a pink dart tongue at the corner.

“For, you know. Safety.”

“Uh huh,” Arthur says, nodding sincerely. “Safety. Yes.”

“Don’t be a shithead,” Eames says again, but it doesn’t count because it fails to contain his smile, which tugs sideways at his annoyance, until he’s mostly just pouting at the floor.

“Are we even going to fit in the shower?” Arthur asks.

So far there’s been an excessive use of flannels and the freestanding bathtub, given Eames’ proclivity for falling over these past few days.

The shower is two sides wall, two sides sheets of relatively sturdy glass panelling and as spacious-for-one as it is, falling through said glass seems like not too unrealistic an outcome.

Eames raises his eyebrows in mock offence, cocking his hip in absolute disapproval of Arthur’s bold lack of faith.

“Might I remind you, _Arthur,_ of a summer not too long ago and a certain beach cubicle-”

“Would this be the beach cubicle in which you strained two muscles and I fractured a finger?” Arthur asks coolly, to which Eames merely sniffs with disdain.

“Let’s shower,” Arthur says without waiting to hear his excuses, stripping his shirt and tossing it onto the bed behind him.

“Aren’t you going to fold it-”

“Don’t be a shithead,” Arthur says, and he follows Eames’ blossoming chuckle into the bathroom.

.

.

The glass panels remain intact, as does most of their dignity.

.

.

Arthur doesn’t know anything about Eames’ recovery after the events that unfolded in Nairobi, because Arthur didn’t know Eames was alive.

What Arthur does know is that his own recovery was both astonishingly easy and the hardest thing he’s ever done.

After escaping Kenya in the back of a Red Cross supply truck, he managed to get a flight to Algiers, where he promptly succumbed to the infection festering in the bullet wound in his left shoulder.

He woke up after several days in a hospital where everyone called him Joshua and told him how very glad they were to have him wake up.

A week later, he was greeted at the hospital doors as bewildered as ever by a Red Cross volunteer, who smiled and said, “Come with me. I’ll help you.”

.

.

Arthur thinks Eames’ recovery was probably very different.

He doesn’t ask, though.

.

.

“You’re a dirty cheat,” Arthur tells Eames often, because nine out of ten times it’s the truth.

“Arthur, how exactly does one cheat at scrabble?” Eames asks drolly, immune to Arthur’s glower across the board.

Arthur doesn’t have an answer to this. All he knows is that Eames pretends to be bad at spelling, seemingly for no reason, and that he needs to invest in a pocket backgammon board because it’s the only game he has a chance of winning.

.

.

The first time Arthur sees the inside of Eames’ subconscious, it’s a flooded art gallery. The paintings are blotchy and the ground is gritty with salt.

(Some things, they cross over into the dream.)

.

.

A hand on his neck.

.

.

Arthur bursts awake and Eames is there, sentinel in the dark.

He rolls out of bed, slams the bathroom door shut behind him before Eames can follow. Knuckle wood knock. That tentative, _“Arthur?”_

Arthur gets in the shower. Scrubs away the nightmare and ignores the quiet sigh from the bedroom that pierces his gut.

Eames, a little breathless.

 _“I thought you wanted to talk,”_ he says through the door, which is possibly the most unfair thing he’s ever said.

It’s been six days since they woke up from Limbo.

.

.

His first love, Lydia Ralph.

His sisters adored her, and so did his mom.

His dad was polite, welcoming, distrustfully pleasant.

And that night, from halfway up the stairs, he heard his dad say,

_“Well, at least he’s not a faggot after all.”_

.

.

On the eighth day, Eames makes the tea when they wake up lazy, quarter past eleven and counting.

The cup hits the cabinet a little too hard and tea sloshes onto the dark wood. He curses, but it’s a soft murmur. They are both cottony and calm.

“I’m going for a shower,” he mumbles. Drops a kiss onto Arthur’s forehead that feels odd, feels kind, like he thinks Arthur needs it.

So Arthur, he bristles around his tea and says _OK_ a bit too loud, a bit too harsh, and Eames looks at him with a downward mouth.

“Are you alright?” he asks.

Arthur doesn’t reply.

.

.

He joins Eames in the shower after a few minutes. It’s forceful and silent and there is a bridgeless space between them. Arthur isn’t sure which of them put it there.

.

.

 _You love me,_ he said, down in Limbo. Eames said it too.

It’s true. Arthur can feel it like a second skin, the give and take of it.

It wasn’t enough before, though, and he doesn’t want to say it, but every nightmare ends with the same sinking feeling.

What if it’s still not enough?

.

.

A hand on the back of his neck.

Heavy, a command.

.

.

He watches Eames with calculating clarity.

Watches him get better, get stronger, get snippier, get softer.

And on the ninth day after waking up in Vienna General, he says,

“You could probably manage by yourself, now.”

It’s supposed to be a ringing endorsement of his healing, and Eames nods and says, “I suppose so.”

There's something in his tone, though, that puts Arthur on edge.

He shakes off the hand on his shoulder and he gets up early the next day, showers by himself and makes a show of making the tea and presses Arthur on details of any jobs coming up.

Seems angry at Arthur's evasive non-answers.

Arthur draws back, away from his hovering, and he tries not to feel the sting of rejection at Eames’ hunched shoulders, his turned back. The way he reaches out to touch Arthur’s head, then withdraws it.

His fingers aren’t trembling anymore.

.

.

Then on the tenth day, Arthur wakes up alone, with no laptop, no phone, no wallet and no gun, and he thinks maybe he has only himself to blame.

.

.

_“Eames. Me. Again. I’ll be in Skopje for the next four days. For fuck sake come.”_

.

.

He goes to Skopje.

The nightmares get worse, which at the very least means Eames is probably fine.

.

.

A hand on his neck and his mouth wet with fear.

.

.

His first love, Lydia Ralph, was so kind.

The first time he saw Lydia, she was sitting on the front row of their shared Calculus class, scribbling notes and playing with her ponytail.

.

.

The first time Arthur saw Eames, he was tied to a chair and there was blood on his torn shirt and he stared back at Arthur with the empty eyes of a beaten hound.

.

.

In Skopje, Arthur buys a new phone and consults with a lawyer on how to win a case that’s only cracked thanks to the weak mental defences of a witness.

It’s easy money, lazy money.

Arthur stays in a plush hotel and resists the urge to call Eames again.

He tracks down Olivier, who is predictably holed up in Santiago and he wonders if Eames is there, too.

He doesn’t check, because checking leads to chasing and he knows he won’t be thanked for that.

So he keeps an eye on Olivier and he consults on cases for pocket money and he takes a lot of Temazepam.

.

.

He has a dream about a girl with heavy blonde pigtails and a knife in her gut. Her delicate hand on the back of his sweat slick neck.

.

.

On the fourth day, he gets a text.

.

.

_The beach cubicles are bigger now._

.

.

Arthur grins, writes half a reply, deletes it, then books a flight to Malaga.

.

.

Arthur’s first love, Lydia Ralph, was kind and good and brave.

He saw her in Paris, once. Holding a man’s hand as they strolled along the Rue du Bac.

Her eyes wide, her mouth agape. She cocked her head and the look on her face was the look of a woman seeing the face of an ex-boyfriend whose funeral she attended four years ago, even though they hadn’t spoken to each other since they were sixteen.

Arthur lifted his hand in a not-quite-wave, the eyes of a deer flashing yellow in the headlights.

Then Lydia Ralph burst out laughing, much to the startlement of the man holding her hand, who looked at her with confusion.

“Nothing,” she said, loud enough for Arthur to hear. “I just remembered the taxi driver from yesterday.”

Then the man laughed, too, and Lydia Ralph cast one final glance back at Arthur, wearing a sly smile on her face that reminded him of how wonderful it felt to fall in love with her at fifteen.

.

.

He knew, without ever needing to check, that she kept his secret for him, just like all the other ones he told her, years ago, when they loved each other the way only teenagers do.

.

.

In Vienna, when Eames was silent and forging death like a mask, Arthur ignored a long lecture from Yusuf, who told him about what he will do to Limbo when he gets there.

“Isn’t it about what Limbo does to _me_ that’s the problem?” Arthur asked stubbornly.

Yusuf’s eyes, impenetrably judging. A kind of worrisome, selfish fear.

More concerned about what on earth he’d say to Cobb if things went wrong.

“Your mind _is_ Limbo, Arthur,” Yusuf said with clipped vowels. “This nonsense of _dropping,_ of _forgetting_ or _losing yourself._ Limbo is as survivable as your own mind makes it.”

Which probably means that Arthur’s mind is even more self-destructive than he cares to admit.

.

.

There was a job in Prague.

Wintry stone, shrouded in the bloody history of the centuries past. Lots of churches and lots of bars.

Arthur found them a house near the end of a tramline.

Mal was dead by then.

Cobb had hit the anger stage of his descant of grief. Anger that would never quite leave him.

The three of them and a chemist, Meisner, who was a bit too clever and knew it.

The city, swallowed up by a snowstorm and the frost lay over them like a glittering charm.

Eames, snowflakes on his eyelashes and pity in his eyes. The way he whispered into that empty glass,

“The only thing you need protecting from is yourself.”

.

.

The first time Arthur saw Eames, they weren’t Arthur or Eames, not yet.

They were silts of sand in vast dunes unmapped. They were husks of flesh laid bare by loyalty.

.

.

They broke that loyalty with misplaced love, so loyalty broke them back.

.

.

When Arthur gets to Malaga, he takes a taxi from the airport to the beach.

It costs him a fortune and the driver’s eyes are heavy with suspicion when he pulls the cash out of his pocket.

He drags his suitcase down the stretch of thick gold sand. Past drunk teenagers and squealing families, towards a row of beach cubicles, thatched and colourful, out of reach of the sea.

They _are_ bigger.

It’s crowded here, the air thick with the smell of sunscreen and salt. Arthur plants himself like a tree into a burrow and waits. Lies on the sand with his head on his case and his hands on his stomach.

The sun beams down at him, approval and laughter.

.

.

In Prague, two and a half years ago. Snow and vodka and a two level dream involving a beautiful manor house and a vineyard and Eames, who forged the mark’s father.

And for the first time in a long while, Arthur remembered Eames had lies in his very bones, like pins holding him together, puppet string strong.

And Arthur, he remembered he was supposed to be afraid.

.

.

“Arthur, is it?” Eames asked the day they pretended to be strangers, his head cocked to the side, predatory cautious.

.

.

A hand on the back of his neck, pinning him and pulling him.

.

.

Arthur bursts awake, swelter shelter sunshine.

It’s red and gold, sinking deep into the green rose sea. Quieter now, here. Less bodies, more water. The tide creeping home.

Breathless and burnt, Arthur on his elbows, peering up at the face staring down at him.

“Didn’t think you’d come,” Eames says and Arthur flinches instinctively but he doesn’t need to. There’s no accusation, no hard corners to bruise himself on as that voice brushes over him, those words that drop like leaves in autumn, like rain into the sea.

Eames sits down on the sand wearing a white shirt and long blue shorts. There’s a bandage wrapped around his left calf, the tell tale smell of bepanthen. Arthur stares at it.

“What did you get?” he asks.

Eames picks at the bandage edge, frayed, a practised fidget.

“Your head on a pike,” Eames replies. Chuckles, then, “Wait and see.”

Arthur sits up properly, even as dislodged sand slips into the seam of his slacks uncomfortably.

Eames, cross-legged and already a lot more tanned than five days ago, smiles at him.

It shouldn’t feel so _new._ It’s not like Eames hasn’t smiled at Arthur before.

For almost a decade they have known each other. Loved and despised each other; shackled to the worst possible start they might ever have had, clawing for something more deserving. Something they could call _good._

It does feel new, this.

Arthur, following Eames, following him _here._ The day splintering in indigo clouds towards a distant night. Eames, healthier and happier and hopeful, smiling at Arthur without any questions. Without any doubt.

“Hi,” Arthur says, feels his own dimples burying inside his cheeks and Eames’ eyes track them, trace the lines of his smile like a caress.

“Hi,” Eames says back, like a breath of fresh air in the desert. Like a welcome sign at an arrivals gate.

Arthur kisses him. Presses their closed lip smiles together as weighted as a promise, pulls back just as quick.

Eames, his hair fluffy over his forehead, his eyes bright blue as the waves licking ever closer to their feet.

“I shouldn’t have taken your gun,” he says, sounding not in the least bit guilty.

“It was a dick move,” Arthur agrees with a grin.

Eames laughs, and he means it. Small as it is. Then,

“Olivier doesn’t hate you, you know.”

Arthur shrugs dismissively, and Eames’ hand, hot over his own, sand between their fingers, a gentle squeeze of reassurance.

“I don’t need you to take care of me,” Eames says as well, and maybe that would have been enough, but he softens, creases at his eyes and he continues, “I think you need to let me help you.”

Arthur stares at the white gold streaks, sun stains on the sea. There’s a boat, right out at the point of the horizon, little more than a blur of sails.

The bridge of his nose is burnt and he’s soaked with sweat and Eames, he’s never sounded more sincere.

“Arthur,” he says, that drag of shapely vowels that no-one else seems to manage.

Breath shards in his throat, a catch and swallow of sound. Arthur looks back at him, at his almost-smile and he feels the strain of need ache inside him, dry as the sting of tears in his eyes.

Eames, waiting, here, waiting.

“Yeah,” he says, rapid snap relief, cracking.

The beach, full and empty. Gulls and sand, people and salt.

Eames’ hand in his hair, their foreheads sticky wet against each other, breath and broken promises.

“Of course I forgive you,” he says, and Arthur falls into it like a void, and he cries into that empty space between them, that’s full of something good.

.

.


	2. Eames

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Darlings,
> 
> Thank you for your reads and comments and kudos! I wasn’t going to post this until later in the series as another story, but Eames’ side was begging to be told.
> 
> In case you haven’t noticed yet, there’s a lot of call and response in this series...
> 
>  **Please bear in mind the tags.** This chapter includes allusions to child abuse and unspecified underage sexual abuse. It doesn’t give much attention to detail, nor does it deal very healthily with any far reaching consequences of this, so please be mindful if you are disturbed. It isn’t pornographic, nor is it made to be gratifying.
> 
> I hope you like it? Let me know?
> 
> Yours always,  
> LRCx

.

.

Eames leaves Arthur in Vienna more out of principle than anything else.

 _You could probably manage by yourself now,_ Arthur said. Sounded so small as he muttered it, a little resentful. As if he would begrudge Eames the independence of taking a shit without supervision.

So it’s with a cruel kind of glee that Eames leaves early on the tenth morning. A righteous, amoral _serves you right_ as he looks down at Arthur’s curled up, badger sett sleep.

He flies to South America, which does nothing good for his raw nerves and his fragile stomach lining, his blood thin as water in his veins. Stays for less than twenty-four hours.

At the airport, trembling with bitter rage, he looks up at the departure boards and wants nothing more than to make his way to Macedonia, where Arthur has already retreated to.

(His phone burning a hole in his pocket, heavy with texts and voicemails.)

Instead, he goes to Spain.

Malaga hasn’t changed too much since he was last there.

It welcomes him kindly, indifferently. He goes to the beach and laughs when he sees that long row of thatched cubicles. Their wide walls and brightly painted doors.

He waits until his heart is too swollen with need not to give in.

Then he texts Arthur.

.

.

His first love, Kathy Ashbourne.

She told him: _You have a face that will open doors and legs aplenty, my love._

Hungry honeybee voice, that secret sting.

.

.

Better than that, though. The long love, the lifetime award.

Arthur, standing in the shallows of the Alboran Sea, skin sunshine pink and hair curling around his ears. He says:

_You’re wearing your Miss Daisy face again._

Says it fondly, eye-roll syllables squashed together between bouts of laughter.

Eames raises his eyebrows innocently, scoops the sea into his palm and flings cold saltwater up Arthur’s back.

Their laughter, it swells with the tide.

.

.

Arthur sleeps badly, now.

He’s always slept like a predator, that apex alertness. Ever so still, shallow breaths for a shallow sleep.

It’s restive now, a flinching, furtive sleep.

Eames sits up against the headboard, Agatha Christie in one hand and Arthur in the other. His fingers smoothe rhythmically through his hair over his scalp, while Arthur’s teeth bite bruises into his own lower lip and a slight, wet sound echoes in the back of his throat.

Eames puts Agatha down, dog-eared and broken spine beloved, and pulls the covers back.

Lets the cool air from the open window ripple gooseflesh over their bodies. Naked and damp and tucked hair-breadth away from each other.

Even as he watches, Arthur flinches closer to his pillow, his fingers curling into fists.

His hands slide down the double curl of Arthur’s folded arms, until he can hold his wrists in loose, readied cuffs.

He leans over Arthur, a practised curve of his spine, shadowing a shape he knows better than his own. He can taste the sour fear on Arthur’s brow, feels the tremor in his chest and he whispers, storm kiss gentle.

“Arthur, it’s OK. Arthur - Arthur - I -”

_Crack!_

Arthur lurches awake, head rising off his pillow so fast that the hard edge of his forehead smacks into the bridge of Eames’ nose.

“Ow fuck,” Eames gasps, gripping tight to Arthur’s wrists before those clever instinct hands can wrap around his throat.

“I - you - what the fuck - Eames -”

Arthur snarls, defensive and gasping, rogue tears spilling down the apple flush of his cheeks that he brushes away with his shoulders when it becomes clear Eames isn’t going to let go of him.

“Eames - Jesus - shit - stop - don’t _laugh,”_ he growls, breath stuttering as Eames grins, blood dripping over his upper lip from his nose.

 _“I’m dot,”_ he says thickly, red tooth smile and a piercing snubbed pain in the middle of his face.

Arthur stretches his neck downwards, reveals the dark tan of his nape as he catches his breath.

The dreams don’t seem to be going away, but his recovery time is getting better. Already his shaking could be mistaken for a shiver as the breeze from the open window sneaks through the cracks between them.

He pushes his face, ticklish breath, into Eames’ neck.

Eames kisses his crown gently, barely a murmur of laughter.

“Are you getting blood in my hair?” Arthur mumbles into the dark hollow between his mouth and Eames’ diaphragm.

“Of course not,” Eames replies breezily through the taste of copper. “And if I were, it would serve you right for headbutting me.”

There’s a mouth at his jaw, now, flutter clump eyelashes brushing at his cheek.

Arthur laughs, a tired cushion sound.

“Thank you for waking up,” he murmurs.

It jolts hard in Eames’ chest, a tight snake coil, before Arthur freezes in his grip. Rattlesnake in the sand, he stammers,

 _“Me_ up. Waking _me_ up,” he flusters. His hands flex at Eames’ stomach muscles and he tries to pull away even as Eames tugs him awkwardly closer. “But, um, you know. That, too.”

Eames wonders if Arthur was always this hesitant, if he always averted his gaze like that before and Eames just mistook it for something more distant, more cold than sheer nerves.

For a moment, he considers pressing the matter. Considers saying something tender, something that might otherwise go unsaid in the light of day.

Arthur’s got grey shadows under his eyes, though, and his hands knot together with uneasy thoughts.

So instead Eames, he kicks the duvet further down the bed and simply says,

“Come on, let’s shower.”

Arthur scowls up at him, those narrow eyes, that narrower mouth.

“I _knew_ you were getting blood in my hair.”

Eames wipes his upper lip with the back of his hand, a smear of red coming away. It’s already stopped bleeding, crusts flaking in his not-quite-beard.

“Just a bit,” he shrugs and holds out his hand in a pushy, finger tug manner. “Come on.”

Arthur looks up at him with those big dark eyes, the perfect shade of distrust, carrying something more, something younger. A kind of hope that doesn’t normally belong there.

“Maybe we should get, you know,” he mutters uncomfortably. “A twin room or something.”

Eames snorts derisively, drops his hand and ignores the flash of worry that dimples Arthur’s expression.

“And maybe you should stop being stupid,” Eames says. “Although that seems even more unlikely. Now get out of bed, will you? The cafe down the road will open in an hour or so.”

He doesn’t wait for Arthur’s hesitation to play out. Just turns on his heel and walks into the bathroom without looking back.

Arthur follows, of course.

Of course he follows.

.

.

In Limbo, there is no forgetting.

There is burial and denial. There are masks and mirrors.

It’s not that Eames forgot himself. It’s not that Eames _forgot._

In fact, he remembered. He remembered more than he ever cared to before, and now he’s awake again, the memories won’t fade. Not like last time.

.

.

His first love, Kathy Ashbourne.

She wrapped herself in aerial silks, hoisted herself high into the air with those impossibly strong thighs, those delicate fingers with silver talons that she’d comb through his hair just a little too hard.

They carried precious secrets between them, a treasure, untold.

She was his first everything. The first stain on his soul, electric as her eyes.

Burn scars heal the slowest.

He kissed her mouth and he kissed her cunt and she told him everything he didn’t know he needed to hear.

.

.

In Limbo, Eames built a house he never lived in. Inhabited it and haunted it.

A house without mirrors.

He painted murals on the walls, tattooed its skeleton with the red-hand fate of thieves.

And then Arthur tore it down. Whispered _You love me_ like it was the first time.

In Limbo, Eames unburied his righteous fury, unleashed it like a storm.

.

.

He’s still angry, but it’s muted, now.

.

.

Malaga has never been high on his list.

It’s busy and bright, which is brilliant.

Busy like stag parties and bright like youthful memory making. People come here to get sick on Malibu and heartbreak, to get sucked off in a club bathroom and throw up three feet away from the front door.

Only, that’s not entirely true.

There’s that church with the broken face saints and the home of Gabirol and the tiny cafe that serves the most exquisite coffee Eames has ever tasted.

And there are those beach cubicles that are sturdier than they look, as they discovered last time they were here.

Time has never been their friend before.

It has chased them, nipped at their heels like a dutiful border collie; it has stretched out before them with an agony akin to eternity.

Now it rests. The clocks are quiet here.

.

.

“Absolutely not,” Eames says when Arthur puts a fold out square board on the table between them. Those long devil triangles and brittle circular counters.

“Eames,” Arthur says despairingly.

His eyes round, brows lopsided in a puppyish plea.

“You’ve never given it a real chance.”

“It’s the worst game in the world,” Eames says, which is categorically true, but only because Monopoly doesn’t count as a game.

Eames has endured plenty of suffering over the years, and he can safely say he would rather be waterboarded than play Monopoly against Arthur ever again.

“It’s the _oldest_ game in the world,” Arthur says, as if hoping to buddy up to Eames’ inner historian.

Eames has immunised himself against this tactic. Ever since he was tricked into taking a job in Mongolia that absolutely did _not_ include time to explore Karakorum as was promised, much to his consternation.

He knows better than to fall for such temptations anymore.

“Debatable,” he replies coolly. “And that’s invalid, seeing as how you won’t let me play _Go_ anymore.”

Arthur scoffs loudly, pushing their drinks aside and laying out the backgammon board without permission.

“I only said _I_ won’t play with you again.”

“Arthur, just what kind of board game hussy do you think I am? I don’t have anyone else to play with.”

Arthur gives him a rosy look, then. Furnace fire warm.

Eames clarifies hastily,

“They’re all too stupid to put up a real effort.”

Arthur quirks an eyebrow, but doesn’t comment on his blunder, which really isn’t a blunder at all, Eames thinks crossly.

The only other people who play board games with Arthur are the Cobb children and they don’t count. Eames is definitely not going to jealous about that, because that would be ridiculous of him.

With the board set up, Arthur nudges Eames’ beer bottle towards him, as if to coax him into responding.

He looks ever so pleased with himself.

His eyes wax bright and a tan on his cheeks. Open collared shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows like a complete heathen and for Christ’s sake, he’s wearing _flip-flops._

Eames grins, taps his bottle against Arthur’s in falsely grumpy cheers and stares hard at the board.

“You can start,” Arthur says magnanimously, as if that will make a shred of difference. “We’ll start easy. Loser buys lunch?”

.

.

Eames buys lunch.

Arthur orders the most unacceptably expensive lobster monstrosity on the menu and a bottle of champagne.

Eames tries to be cross about it, he really does.

.

.

(He isn’t cross at all.)

.

.

Arthur sleeps badly, now.

He’s always slept on his stomach, belly down and one hand under the pillow in reach of his gun. The other inevitably somewhere on Eames’ body, which he insists isn’t unconscious posturing but Eames knows better.

He curls up tight now. A corkscrew with sharp ends, twisted taut by his dreams.

Deepend dive into sleep, he makes this sound like Eames hasn’t heard in almost a decade. A buckled up whimper, like the one he made the day he broke faith in Nairobi.

In the night, where secrets are less easily concealed, Arthur tucks tight into Eames’ side, sweat trickling down his torso, and he mumbles sleepy syllables that sound like _I promised, I promised, I promised._

.

.

Eames texts Olivier, holed up in Santiago.

He tells her: _You can’t bully me into choosing._

She doesn’t reply.

.

.

(There was a time when that would have broken him.)

.

.

Arthur sleeps badly, now.

Whispers _I promised I promised I promised_ like if he says it enough times, he won't have broken it anymore.

Eames hasn’t said anything, not yet, and neither has Arthur. They’re both thinking it though.

Will he _dream_ badly, now, too?

.

.

In an airport, once, years and years ago. Eames sat at a Business Class bar with Mallorie Cobb. Eating olives and drinking wine and martinis.

She teased him rotten thing that she was, said with a Lord’s Prayer reverence: _He’s quite handsome._

Upon seeing the yearning look in her face, lovesick, gorging herself on wedded bliss, he had shut her down in a flash and she had seen it instantly. His vulnerability, that wretched unarmoured flesh of affection.

Desire like diamonds soaked in blood.

 _Don’t let it get in the way of the job,_ she said without demanding.

He did his best.

God above knows, he did his fucking best.

.

.

His first love, Kathy Ashbourne.

Backroom bliss and a sickly, overwhelming shame whenever she left, that only made him hungrier for her presence.

The first time he cried, she called him a _boy,_ and he thought ever so quietly in the chasm of his lonely mind, _But I am a boy._

.

.

The day after Robert Fischer stepped off a plane a happier son than he boarded it, Eames broke into Arthur’s hotel room.

Arthur, lying in bed holding a phone up in front of his face, frowned at him.

“What are you doing?” he asked with a tone of such severe finality Eames almost believed it.

“I just wanted to make sure you were resting,” Eames said, offering Arthur’s phone a pointed look of scathing disapproval.

“Why?” Arthur asked, and Eames’ heart broke, crystal over concrete.

He stripped down to his boxers, wrestled the phone out of Arthur’s hands and steadied him, boneless, wheezing. Pinned him to the bed with dead weight and kisses.

Lying in the stubborn, elastic silence, Arthur’s rabbit scurry heart under his ear, Eames whispered,

“Happy birthday, darling.”

.

.

 _It isn’t love,_ Arthur scorned the last time, before Limbo claimed them with that unforgetful bliss.

That beautiful face so ugly with the conviction of his rejection. A mirror reflecting back his contempt for what little Eames had to offer.

 _It isn’t love. It’s Stockholm Syndrome,_ Arthur said.

It wasn’t the first time he’d said it, and really, it isn’t Arthur’s fault he thinks that.

.

.

Ten years ago, in the blister pop burn of Kenya, Eames was a prisoner and Arthur was a soldier, and some barriers, they are insurmountable.

.

.

His first love, Kathy Ashbourne.

It wasn’t love. He knows that.

There are words for what that was, what she was.

Only, there _aren’t_ words. Not really.

.

.

The days simmer as spring crawls out of itself. Summer sheds snake skins and the days, they lengthen. Elongating and burning.

Arthur sleeps, not exactly _better,_ but _longer._

They swim in the sea and drink excessive amounts of rum. They get sun stained and eat unreasonable quantities of seafood and Eames comes incredibly close to winning a game of backgammon after a week of rigorous training.

Twenty-four days after waking up from Limbo, Eames checks them out of their hotel, bundles them into a car and drives to Valencia.

.

.

“There’s a world that belongs to people like us, Nicks,” Kathy Ashbourne said.

She stroked his face as she said it in that abrupt, challenging voice of hers.

 _Nicks,_ she called him. Everyone called him that, even his mother. Until she stopped, when it started meaning something else.

Eames has looked for that world. A world for circus aerialists and dream forgers. He doesn’t think it exists.

There was a time when he was so very sure that nothing would ever belong to him.

Now, behind the wheel of a slightly too indulgent BMW, driving the long way up the East coast of Spain, he knows better.

He looks at Arthur, at his tanned face and his hair slicked back. Wearing one of Eames’ shirts and fussing with the radio.

He looks at Arthur and he thinks,

_This, this is mine. This space right here, between us._

.

.

Arthur tells him about a woman called Lydia who is probably real.

Eames tells Arthur about a man called Harry who is mostly real.

.

.

“Where are we going?” Arthur asks.

There’s a mostly empty bottle of fizzy water resting between his lax legs. The windows are down at the radio is off, because Eames finds Arthur’s taste offensive and Arthur finds Eames’ taste nonexistent.

“Valencia,” Eames says with a trill of his tongue.

Arthur rolls his eyes, slumping deeper into his seat.

“We’re stopping in Valencia,” he corrects Eames.

“How do you know that?”

“I found the booking for the hotel in your emails.”

“You snooping cretin,” Eames reprimands as air rushes through their hair through the open window and the speedometer nudges up to almost dangerous. “When will you develop a sense of adventure?”

“I don’t like surprises.”

“You’ll like this one,” Eames says with very real confidence.

Their relationship has never exactly been built on the sturdiest of foundations, but on this matter, Eames hasn’t the slightest of doubts.

This gesture, ten years in the making. He’s never been more sure of anything in his life.

“We’ll stop in Valencia for two nights,” he acknowledges. “There’s a gorgeous little club you’re going to detest. There are Almodovar posters everywhere, darling. Try not to punch anyone. The owner owes me about ten favours.”

Arthur’s expression, a haughty stone glare.

“Don’t look at me like that, dear,” Eames warns. “It’s worth it. Best marijuana outside of Cadiz.”

Arthur doesn’t respond, probably because he is taking a moment to decide whether to wait until the car has stopped, or just throw himself out now.

“Eames,” he says, tetchy little thing. “You can’t drug my dreams better.”

Eames stares long and sand-soft out of the windscreen. The tyres eating miles of clean road and the engine guzzling petrol like a starving animal.

Arthur’s frustrated sadness, a toxin in the air.

“Arthur,” he says, ever so brazen, ever so true. “Do you trust me?”

It’s cowardly not to look at him, Eames knows, but his eyes, hypnotised. Stuck on the rolling tarmac lolling ahead.

Sunglasses on his forehead, sweat on his nose.

Arthur looks, too, and it shouldn’t hurt.

“You know I do,” he says, and that should burst lights inside him, wild as fireworks but he just feels breathless, deflated.

 _You love me,_ Arthur said in Limbo, full of intangible trust.

“Put the radio on,” he says, instead of asking again. “What’s a road trip without a bit of trash music?”

It’s surely pure, spiteful amusement that drives Arthur to put a _classical_ channel on.

Not even Arthur is that much of a cliche.

.

.

His first, Kathy Ashbourne.

She was there, a smothering doting angel, until she wasn’t.

Until his mother, tear stricken, blood in her teeth and wailing, put him in the back of a rental car and drove him far away, shivering and devastated.

Drove all through the night.

.

.

Valencia swallows them up.

Arthur _loathes_ the bar.

Andreu, who owes Eames _eight and a half favours,_ apparently, takes the criticism hidden in Arthur’s judgy little face with jovial glee. He seems to enjoy riling him up as much as Eames does, and Arthur shoots him dirty looks of accusation at every opportunity.

Arthur doesn’t seem as settled as he did in Malaga.

His hand disappears into his pocket more, where his totem rests and he frowns at Eames, not with his usual disapproval. It's a puzzled look, like a question mark.

Eames doesn’t comment on it, more out of self-preservation than anything.

He knows Arthur’s worried about Eames not having a totem. Knows Arthur thinks that the little circle of casino plastic was a totem and Eames, he can’t bring himself to say _No, darling, that was never my totem._

Because then he’d have to tell Arthur what his real totem is.

.

.

In Chile, six hours into those twenty-two he spent on South American soil, Olivier told him he was an idiot if he thought Arthur really loved him.

“You were his biggest fan two weeks ago,” Eames reminded her and she nodded.

“Yes,” she said with disdain, with disgrace. “But two weeks ago I didn’t know the truth.”

Then she said it was _guilt_ tying him to Eames, proving once and for all how truly she has blinded herself to the reality of what has happened here between them all.

“No, it’s guilt that ties _you_ to me,” Eames snarled back at her.

She looked away, then. Stricken. Struck. Face crimson behind the copper curtain of her hair.

He left. Flew to Spain and told himself he’d be fine without her.

.

.

He hasn’t been _without her_ since he was twenty-one years old, though, so really, he has no idea if he will be.

.

.

His first something, Kathy Ashbourne.

She set a precedent for his ability to look at a woman objectively. She set a bar of dangerous glamour that he’s never really been able to eradicate.

There’s a reason he never exactly warmed to Mallorie Cobb.

.

.

Valencia sinks into darkness, the world weary and the delighted come out to play. Andreu offers them privacy in one of the upstairs quarters, fronted by a poster for _All About My Mother,_ which Eames laughs and doesn’t pay heed to.

It’s not the first time Eames gets Arthur stoned. It’s the first time he sets out with an agenda, though.

Rolling the papers, filterless and crinkling in his heavy fingers, Eames keeps up a steady stream of chatter while Arthur stares grumpily at him from across the miles of the sofa.

Luckily, he’s so busy being as visually disbelieving as possible, he doesn’t notice anything off about what Eames puts into the roll up.

 _Best marijuana,_ he called it. Which is absolutely true.

And as long as Arthur doesn’t explicitly ask if all he’s smoking is tobacco and weed, well. Then it’s not really lying at all.

(The Almodovar posters on the walls, they are tattooed with variations of _Sueños_ and Eames takes full advantage of Arthur’s lacking Spanish, it’s true.)

Despite his reticence, or perhaps because of it, Arthur snatches the spliff greedily when Eames offers it. Takes a long pulling drag without breaking eye contact.

Hollows out his cheeks like he’s trying to distract Eames.

Eames just lies back in a sprawl and enjoys the view.

The smell of weed is pungent, overpowers the lonely tobacco of Eames’ cigarette.

Somnacin, on the other hand, is odourless.

.

.

The first time Eames tried Andreu’s concoction, he hadn’t been warned either.

It had been a powerful dosage, the leaves soaked in somnacin resin for almost a week.

His dreams had been viciously bright. Swamped him with a plethora of new imaginings, and he could smell his mother’s lullabies and his sister’s squealing laughter for days after he woke up.

The stuff he gives Arthur is weak, Andreu assures him.

Arthur sucks it into his lungs, oxygen starved, and Eames watches his eyes grow heavy, his mouth lift and slacken.

He’s barely awake when they walk to the hotel and Eames doubts he’ll even remember staggering into the lift come morning. The concerned, wry look the receptionist gave them as they passed by.

.

.

Arthur sleeps on his side, pressed naked against Eames. One arm slung over his middle and the other under their shared pillow.

He flinches a few times, kicks out and twitches.

He doesn’t whisper a word.

.

.

In Nairobi, Eames woke up in a dark, broken house. A woman was there, and her little boy.

The boy held his bruised head still while the woman dug the bullet out of his torso. Wrapped his blood crushed hand and the burnt flesh of his left leg as best she could.

 _Wewe ni hai,_ she told him.

 _You are alive,_ she said.

.

.

“What was in the cigarette, Eames?” Arthur asks in the car.

Valencia, mere dust in the their tracks.

“It worked,” Eames says defensively, a flush in his cheeks despite the blasting air con.

Arthur’s hands are loosely curled around a mostly full bottle of fizzy water.

When Eames glances sideways, there’s a rare, unexpected smile on his face.  He looks his age, looks younger. Two weeks off thirty and he might still be a teenager.

A particularly dangerous, disturbingly heavily armed one, but a teenager nonetheless.

“Eames, the depths to which I stooped to get you out of Limbo were pretty fucked up,” he says, and that goddamn smile, hotter than the sun. “Being drugged without my consent hardly registers.”

Eames frowns, even though it’s shamefully accurate.

“Don’t say it like that,” he mutters with rather undeserving resentment.

Arthur laughs, actually _laughs._ That proper laugh that trebles in his throat like a songbird, for the first time since maybe before the Fischer Job.

Eames smiles weakly, hopefully. Dares another glance.

Arthur’s still looking at him with that teenager’s grin. A boisterous, ill-advised excitement.

“Chemically speaking, it was somnacin,” he says.

“Huh,” Arthur replies, upturned bucket of questions in his eyes, in the curve of his mouth. “So you -”

“Yes,” Eames clicks, teeth hard in his gums.

“What would you have done -”

“Well I’d have gone in after you, wouldn’t I?” Eames retorts with a waspish lack of sting. Tries to sound impatient but by the look on Arthur’s face, he fails miserably. “I’ve got enough to last a couple of months, going slow,” he says with a moody smirk.

Arthur snorts, settles back against the window and puts his feet up on the dashboard.

“Thanks,” he says, and he means more than just the stash.

Eames shrugs his shoulders, like it's no bother, like it isn't everything.

.

.

They cross into France four days later.

When Arthur gets on his high horse about border crossings and rental fees, Eames placates him with snappy reassurances that the car is not, in fact, rented.

“What the fuck do you mean you bought a BMW for a freaking road trip? Jesus Christ, Eames, you are so fucking bad at money. How do you do anything?”

.

.

In Vienna, on the second day, Eames barely kept down what sips of water he braved.

He slumped jellyfish trembling over the toilet bowl, the bath, the bed.

Felt tears of nausea in his eyes, blood hot. And he heard Arthur, harsh like lightning, crying beside him and saying,

_This was supposed to be the easy bit._

Eames thinks he wasn’t supposed to be privy to that breakdown, so he doesn’t bring it up.

On the sixth day, they sit on the covers of the bed drinking tea and Eames puts his hand on Arthur’s knee. He wants to say something, something mundane and profound.

He can’t think of a single thing.

.

.

All in all, the ten hour car trip takes eight days.

When Eames reaches Marseille’s city limits, a tiny crease appears in Arthur’s freckly brow. Not a dipping frown, rather, an upwards crinkle.

A question mark etched sideways into his face.

“Why are we here?” he asks, a faint tremor of fear in his throat, coating his words in something fragile.

Eames, soft with resolve, sturdy with love.

“I remember things, too, you know.”

Arthur’s intake of breath, quick and hitching.

He stares childlike out of the car window, hungry wonder and blossoming delight.

.

.

Ten years ago, in the blister pop burn of Kenya, Eames was the mark and Arthur was the Extractor, but the secrets they shared were unfathomable.

An uncaged beast of burden.

.

.

“Where are we?” Arthur asks when Eames parks in a tiny cobbled car park.

Eames is too full of ready energy to be facetious.

“Come on, out you get,” he says.

They pull their meagre bags out of the boot and Eames takes Arthur’s hand, brief squeeze; barely felt. Then he walks down a shallow street, bookended by trees.

The sea is in the air, lingering in the faraway gulls.

Eames reaches into his wallet and pulls out a chain bearing two keys.

Arthur stares at them, trance of denial. The child that stares beneath the tree at the presents without believing. His pink mouth open, eyes of fire.

“Eames,” he says, the way only he ever says it.

Eames walks them to a heavy brown door, fits the key into the lock. It turns heavy, a knowing familiar click.

Arthur follows him inside, shuffling feet.

It’s cooler here, barely eleven in the morning. Arthur’s holding his breath, Eames can feel the strain of it in his own lungs.

The steps are steep. Winding twist and on the third floor, top of this little tower, a red door.

Second key, second lock.

The flat hasn’t changed much since he was last in, trusts Madame Segal to have taken care of it just like always.

Eames drops his bag on the sofa and moves to open the shutters of the balcony, the great bay windows. Light dancing through the open living room like a breeze.

Arthur stands very still in the doorway.

There’s a ghost in his face. It rests over his features like a mask, like a forgery.

“Where are we?” he asks again, a hard edge of demand even though there’s sweat on his brow and he looks more like a rabbit than a Point Man right now.

Eames smiles with half of his mouth. Feels a rushing sense of right in his bones.

There are books on these shelves and tins in the cupboards and clothes in the drawers.

There’s room for more.

There’s a red wine stain on the coffee table and a stolen Mondrian on the wall and he says, truthfully,

“Home.”

Arthur laughs, that real and ringing laugh. His expression creases and smoothes into surprise and joy and something Eames adores.

“If you want it,” he adds, afterthought. Afterlife of an insecurity that no longer separates them.

The laugh clears, mist on the sea, leaving behind only the sunset.

Arthur looks at him, really looks. Eames looks back.

Arthur’s got bags under his eyes and his shoulders are slumped. He’s tanned and tired and his eyes are shining and his mouth is wet. He licks his lips, shuddering breath.

Says,

“Yes, yes. I want it.”

He’s standing in the doorway, sunshine spilling over him like a spell. He stumbles into Eames’ home, into Eames’ arms.

“You remembered,” he whispers, like a mantra into his own mouth, a bead of a prayer.

“I remembered,” Eames replies, like an answering song.

.

.


End file.
